Democrats -- Lunsford-Stumbo Now Ahead of Beshear-Mongiardo; Henry-True Falls to Third:
In a Democratic Primary for Governor of Kentucky today, 5/1/07, three weeks to the 5/22/07 vote, the ticket of Bruce Lunsford and Greg Stumbo has a slight advantage over the ticket of Steve Beshear and Dan Mongiardo, according to a SurveyUSA poll of likely Kentucky Democratic primary voters, conducted exclusively for WHAS-TV Louisville and WCPO-TV in Cincinnati. Lunsford ran 5th in a SurveyUSA poll released in March; today he runs 1st, with 29% of the vote. The Beshear-Mongiardo ticket gets 23% today. The ticket of Steve Henry and Renee True finishes 3rd today, at 18%. Others are in single digits. Lunsford and Beshear tie among female Democrats. Lunsford's lead comes entirely from males, where the Lunsford ticket runs 12 points stronger than the Beshear ticket. Lunsford is strongly supported by those opposed to a vote on gambling. Lunsford does not get less than 28%, nor more than 30%, in any region of the state. By contrast, Beshear-Mongiardo's support is heavily concentrated in Eastern KY, where the ticket gets 42% of the vote. Beshear runs weakest in Louisville, where the Beshear ticket gets 15% of the vote. Henry runs strong in Louisville, where the Henry-True ticket gets 28% of the vote, which equals Lunsford's support there.

Republicans -- Fletcher-Rudolph Gains Ground on Northup-Hoover:
In a Republican Primary for Governor of Kentucky today, 5/1/07, three weeks to the 5/22/07 vote, incumbent Republican Ernie Fletcher and running mate Robbie Rudolph appear to hold off a challenge from former U.S. Congresswoman Anne Northup and her running mate Jeff Hoover, according to a SurveyUSA poll of likely Republican primary voters, conducted exclusively for WHAS-TV Louisville and WCPO-TV in Cincinnati. The ticket of Fletcher-Rudolph gets 46% today. The ticket of Northup-Hoover gets 34% today. Fletcher's support is heaviest in North Central KY, where Fletcher gets 58% of the vote, compared to Hoover's 22%, and in Eastern KY, where Fletcher gets 55% of the vote, compared to Northup's 24%. Northup's support is heaviest in Louisville, where she gets 57% of the vote, compared to Fletcher's 24%. Fletcher and Northup are tied among those opposed to a vote on gambling. Fletcher leads by 16 points among those in favor of a vote on gambling.

Filtering:
2,000 Kentucky adults were interviewed by SurveyUSA 4/28/07 through 4/30/07. Of them, 1745 were registered to vote, including 909 registered Democrats and 669 registered Republicans. Of the 909 registered Democrats 612 were identified by SurveyUSA as likely to vote in the 5/22/07 Democratic primary and were included in the survey. Of the 669 registered Republicans, 421 were identified by SurveyUSA as likely to vote in the 5/22/07 Republican primary and were included in the survey.

Tracking:
SurveyUSA released tracking polls in the Kentucky primaries on 3/6/07 and 4/3/07. In both of those polls, "running mates" (the Lieutenant Governors) were not named. Today's 5/1/07 release used a questionnaire which did name running mates. Separately, the 3/6/07 and 4/3/07 polls gave likely primary voters the opportunity to select "another candidate" in addition to those named. Respondents to today's 5/1/07 release were not given an option to select "another candidate." In these ways, SurveyUSA's data from March and April is not directly, apples-to-apples, trackable with today's 5/1/07 data. SurveyUSA does not produce tracking graphs here as a result. However, for reference, the link to the previous SurveyUSA Kentucky poll results is here: SurveyUSA Kentucky Tracking Data.